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Thursday, September 19, 2013

#714: Richard Gordon

More woo! (Are you starting to miss the creationists yet?).
Richard Gordon is the inventor of the technique known as quantum touch. Yes, it
is quantum;
it is healing by touch; and it “offers you a dimension of healing that, until now, has not seemed
possible,” according to Gordon. Indeed.

Gordon promotes himself as an “impassioned promoter of
Life-Force Science,”
though the “science” inflection is a stylish grammatical ornament that should
not be taken too seriously, and says anyone can learn his particular brand of
healing touch “regardless of your age, culture, religion or belief system.”
There is a report from an attendee at one of his meetings here.
At the meeting Richard asserted that he could ‘change the molecular structure
of water’ by placing a glass of water between his hands (essentially Masaru Emoto’s delusion).
He was, however, unwilling to test whether the structure had actually changed –
apparently there was only one machine sensitive enough to measure the change,
and that one was too expensive to use.

Quantum Touch does not work, of course, but Gordon’s got
anecdotes to cover up its lack of efficacy. According to Gordon “One nurse told me that a physician asked her to stop using Quantum-Touch
post-surgically since he could no longer predict how much pain medication to
give the patient.” The technique has also been endorsed by Norm Shealy,
so there you go.

Diagnosis:
Seriously delusional rather than a charlatan, it seems. Of course, therapeutic
touch with quantum thrown in had to gain some popularity at the fringes of the
New Age movement, but Gordon’s overall impact is unclear.